The Morris County chronicle. [volume] (Morristown, N.J.) 1877-1915, 1887-01-29
NEW YoRk's INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL.
Practical knowledge the Central idea
nf fI,a Iustit.,tinn-A Ieasan.

Practical knowledge the Central idea
of the Institutional Lesson.
The new building Of the Industrial
Education association, of this city, is now
In readiness to be seen, and visitors will
be welcomed at any time.
From top to bottom the building,
which is go feet wide and 100 feet deep,
has been remodeled and filed with every
possible convenience for the training of
young people In half half hundred
branches of usefulness. For the cooking
class there are facilities for teaching
class of sixty girls at once; in the depart
ments devoted to sewing, drawing, mod
cling in clay, carpentering, kitchen
training, and all branches Of domestic
service the machinery is simply superb,
and there is also a kindergarten for the
youngest children not yet old enough to
learn any practically useful work The
central idea of the whole institution is
that the boy or girl does not obtain in the
public schools the practical knowledge
necessary to make living; he or she
must get that more or less blunderingly
after school days are ended, with the con-
sequence that the boy who would have
made an excellent plumber becomes a
bad carpenter, and the girl who would
have made comfortable living as type
writer is condemned to mediocrity in
some shop.
This great work to which this vener-
able building is devoted is not in any
sense a charitable work, all the lessons
given there having to be paid for, but
neither is it money making institution,
and the charges are simply sufficient to
cover the expenses. For instance, cook
ing lessons cost ten cents a lesson, which
paws for the material used in the lesson,
the children in the kindergarten pay so
cents a week; lessons in dressmaking,
domestic service, embroidery, may be had
at triiing cost from the best of instruct-
ors. The building has been opened only
a few weeks, and although the advan-
tages offered are scarcely known, pupils
are already hocking TO its classes. In the
departments devoted to children the man
ayers wish-to impress upon parents and
the public that it is not in any sense a
charitable work, but an attempt to make
people understand that technical, manual
education is an essential factor to boys
or girls whole training; in other words,
| it is the carrying out of the kindergarten
system beyond the kindergarten age; the
| introduction of technical education in the
public schools of Boston and Chicago
proves to have been of very great value
| to the children.
In some of our most noted private
schools for boys several hours a day are
now devoted to manual training, the
boys working at carpenters benches or
blacksmiths' FORCES, and soon developing
tastes which, when cultivated, may be Of
the utmost value to them a few years
from now. In the famous school found
ed by Felix Adler and supported by the
Society for Ethical Culture, of which he
is the head, half the day is devoted to
learning from books and half the day to
learning how to do the worlds work.
| have seldom heard more interesting
lesson than Glanced to hear there one
day, cotton cloth being the subject Of the
lesson. The boys were required to ten
where the cotton plant grew, how it was
picked, ginned, spun, woven and made
into garments; they knew the average
number Of bales produced in this country
and in Egypt and India, and they were
made to explain upon a miniature gin
and a miniature loom exactly how the
cotton in the fields came to make the
shirts on their backs. For the purposes
of the lesson real cotton plants, with the
ripe bolls, were shown, together with
pictures of the fields, and the boy who
came out from the lecture upon cotton
cloth must have been very dull boy in
deed if he did not understand the sub
ject.-New York Cor. Brooklyn Eagle.